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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25991299">Hands Knotted Together</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarknessAroundUs/pseuds/DarknessAroundUs'>DarknessAroundUs</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Written Life [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Riverdale (TV 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bookstores, F/M, Marriage Proposal, Wedding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:07:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,034</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25991299</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarknessAroundUs/pseuds/DarknessAroundUs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In a bookstore in the Catskills, Betty and Jughead get married. Toni officiates. Archie lounges with his guitar on a bean bag in the children's section.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Written Life [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1314302</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Hands Knotted Together</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthLaughsInFlowers/gifts">EarthLaughsInFlowers</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title lovingly borrowed from The Conditional by Ada Limón. </p><p>This story takes place between a Grand Mistake, and This Day, a Life.</p><p>I'm well aware I promised to stop writing this series. Clearly I lied. Thank you for putting up with me.</p><p>This is a wedding fic by someone who had to be talked into having a wedding. So please keep that in mind. I also tried as much as possible for it to reflect this Betty and this Jughead. </p><p>This is based loosely on a series of head canons I wrote out and published on Tumblr a long time ago. It is dedicated to EarthLaughsInFlowers who inspired some of the head canons and who has so encouraged this series over the years (and yes it has been years....) </p><p>Many thanks to KittiLee for being THE BEST and for beta-ing this.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <ol>

</ol><p>
  <span>It’s a rainy day in February when Jughead proposes. Outside, the snow is quickly turning to mush. Inside, Jughead’s down on one knee, on Betty’s carpet, asking her to marry him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It hasn’t been a particularly notable day. There had been cinnamon buns at their favorite coffee shop and a brief browse through a bookstore. But it wasn’t their anniversary (a week ago), or Valentine's Day (two days in the future still).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She says yes of course, still in shock when he presses his lips against hers and slips a ring on her finger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why now?” she manages to ask, as he carries her towards the bed, his arms firmly around her waist.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d never thought of Jughead as the marrying kind. She’d always assumed they’d move in together one day, but she thought they’d always be one of those couples who had lifelong commitment without the paperwork.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When their good friend Lucas had gotten married a summer ago now, Jughead had teased him relentlessly about conforming to old fashioned values. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s been two years, and one week,” Jughead says, a grin on his face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You told me once, that you’d be up for moving in with me in two years. I thought an anniversary proposal was a little too cliche for writers, so I waited as long as I could.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty’s starting to wonder if she’s missing something here. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was a marriage proposal not a moving in together proposal right? A glance at her finger confirms that the ring is there, simple and gold with one emerald (Jughead knows how she feels about diamonds).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead lays her on the bed, although for this moment the electricity between them has stilled. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But then she remembers that night, the summer after grad school, when Jughead asked if he could move in, and she said that it was a real commitment for her. Something in the future, something she’d reserved for marriage, or at the very least a healthy amount of foundation. At least two years of dating, is what she’d said at the time. Two years had seemed so far off then.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You remembered,” she said, reaching up to stroke his cheek. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I set a google alert for it.” Jughead said, his expression soft. She knows how much he hates putting anything in his calendar. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“At the time, you didn’t say anything about marriage,” Betty says. He hadn’t just been silent the first time it had come up either. In the intervening years, they’d attended three weddings without him broaching the subject. She’d always thought that was his way of making it clear that it wasn’t a path he planned to go down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was waiting for you to be ready, ” Jughead says, a nervous look entering his eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The funny thing is that she had been ready before now. When he first asked to move in together they hadn’t even been dating for six months, they were still figuring basics out about each other. Jughead had yet to learn that Betty hated pickles, back then. She had no idea he couldn’t handle horror movies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They weren’t even each other’s emergency contacts, for goodness sake, and now Betty had nursed Jughead through an appendectomy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am,” she says, kissing him. “I so very much am.”</span>
</p><p> </p>
<ol>

</ol><p>
  <span>“I can’t believe you’re eloping,” Archie shouts. They’re in the back booth of a packed bar in Brooklyn so no one so much as glances their way, when he shouts. Toni just rolls her eyes, accustomed to his melodramatic moments.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why?” Jughead asks. As far as he’s concerned, there’s nothing that screams big wedding about either of them. Betty owns a grand total of four dresses, and he’s seen her hike in three of them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dad will never forgive you,” Archie says. “Have you told him yet?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know we told him,” Betty responds. “You drove up with us, and were on the sofa grinning like an idiot when we told him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred had been so excited when they told him. He’d spun Betty around the room like a little kid. He couldn’t seem to stop smiling and saying, “The real deal.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Archie’s face is redder than Jughead’s ever seen it, and considering they spent the majority of the last two years as roomates, and have fought about everything from socks on door knobs, to who was actually supposed to pay the utility bills, that’s saying something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You told him you were getting married. Not that you were fucking eloping,” Archie shouts. This time a girl two booths down turns around to look.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s the same exact end result,” Betty says, folding her hands over her chest. “Fred will understand. He knows who I am as a person. That I care about who I am getting married to, and the day itself is beside the point, and certainly not worth spending 50,000 bucks on.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Toni laughs at that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Archie rolls his eyes, “You tell dad you’re eloping, and then we’ll see what happens.” </span>
</p>
<ol>

</ol><p>
  <span>The department store Betty is strolling through has six floors, thankfully it only has two different dress departments as well as a by appointment only wedding dress department. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Archie had ended up being right. Fred hadn’t prohibited them from eloping, but he’d made it abundantly clear that he wanted a wedding. He’d referred to it as a once in a lifetime opportunity, and pointed out that this was the only chance they had for everyone’s friends to meet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Normally Betty wouldn’t bother with appointments for something as absurd as a dress she’s going to wear once, but Veronica, Toni’s on and off again girlfriend, who works long hours as an intern for a fashion house has made her one. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Toni had opted out of today’s events, and Betty couldn’t help but be a little jealous of her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Veronica glides up to the reception, and asks the employee, Merrisa, to check them into their appointment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a weekday, so it’s pretty empty. Still Merrisa takes her time looking Betty up in the system before she asks “When’s your wedding date?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They don’t have a venue yet, so a date right now is more theoretical than anything, but Betty would like to get this over sooner rather than later. They’ve already decided to get married, what’s the point of dragging this stage out any longer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“June 12th.” Betty says, pulling a date more or less out of her hat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Merrisa’s jaw drops, and then she stares at Betty’s waist. Betty glances down at her stomach, and it looks as normal as ever. She didn’t even drop anything on her coat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We don’t do shotgun weddings,” Merrisa says. “You can try Macy’s.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A hundred sharp responses whirled through Betty’s astonished mind, but none of them made it out of her mouth, before Veronica snarks, “I’m reviewing you on Yelp!” while pulling Betty towards the elevators. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<ol>

</ol><p>
  <span>Jughead had never seen the point of hiking before he met Betty. The woods looked nice out the window of a car, and there were far fewer bugs that way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But now he knows cars can’t climb narrow trails or the steep vertical sides of mountains, that there is a different way to see the world, hidden at the end of every path in the woods, even if it’s just a stream. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He likes the steady exertion that comes with hiking, the way a conversation has plenty of space out on the trails. He can talk about things here, that seem impossibly hard in other settings. It’s like the wood and the exertion loosens up a part of himself, as well as a part of Betty.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead still follows Betty’s lead, but he’s better at keeping up now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’ve already been to the vista, eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the valley spread out beneath them like a quilt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now they’re almost back to the car, out of breath from half running down hills, still a little chilly in the early April air. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you,” Betty says, turning back to glance at him. Her expression is soft and open.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead’s glad there doesn’t even have to be a particular reason for her to say it. “I love you too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He feels safe with her in a way he never imagined possible. Now that they’re engaged, he feels more than ever, a sense of security and permanence with her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Jughead was 18 and driving guns across the border, he tried not to think too hard about the future, he couldn’t imagine growing old, and now, a decade later, he knows who he’ll grow old with, and he finds a deep sense of comfort in that.. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty drives down the mountain a little, and stops at the Phoenicia Diner without even asking. It’s their post Catskill hike ritual. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead manages to down two milkshakes over the course of the meal, and by the time the last ones finished, he’s so full that going straight to the car doesn’t seem like the best life choice. Instead they wander, hand in hand through the half dead downtown till they come across a bookstore. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the window, Jughead’s book, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ghost of a Bullet</span>
  </em>
  <span>, is displayed prominently, even though it came out over a year ago. Now Jughead has to go in because Betty’s dragging him through the door. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once they are inside, he doesn’t even think about his book because he’s surrounded by books he loves and admires, carefully curated and well presented. The wood floors creak in just the right way under his shoes. There’s a wonderful view of the forest out back, through french doors.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Welcome to Magpies,” the store clerk calls cheerfully from the back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love it,” Betty says at the same time Jughead says, “Let’s get married here.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His sentence is longer and louder than hers, so he shouldn’t be surprised when the store clerk claps her hands and says, “Oh good, our first wedding.”</span>
</p>
<ol>

</ol><p>
  <span>“Could you be more cliche? More hipster? Will there be fairy lights?” Toni jokes, when she receives her letterpress invitation, with the venues listed on the back, in typewriter font.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you going to get a dog just so it can wear a sign around it’s neck?” Archie jokes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m pretty sure that’s for proposals,” Betty says, busy putting the finishing touches on her wedding favors. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>6.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty can hear Toni and Veronica bickering outside as she changes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t believe you of all people couldn’t have talked Betty into a white dress?” Toni says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You could have just as easily,” Veronica huffs back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a moment of silence as Betty pulls the dress over her head and then Toni says, “Are you implying I couldn’t?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty pushes her way out of the dressing room, which is really the employee washroom at Magpie Books. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s wearing her wedding dress, which is to say the blue linen sundress she splurged on last month. It was two hundred dollars more than what she would normally spend on a dress, which means that it must be appropriate for a wedding. Particularly the kind that takes place in a bookstore. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I like the dress. It’s my day. No one here thinks I’m a virgin,” Betty says, making eye contact with both of them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine.” Veronica says, and storms off. Betty does not take it personally. Toni and Veronica are on break again, unexpectedly as of lunch, and that’s never the easiest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Although Betty’s not too worried. This break, like all the others, probably won’t stick. Betty suspects that Veronica and Toni are going to make it the distance, it’s just the timing wasn’t for the best. They met before they were ready to settle down, and that has caused a lot of problems they like to blame each other for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Toni, like the good friend that she is, gets Betty to sit down at the makeshift makeup station she set up, and then proceeds to put more products on Betty than Betty knew existed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even though Betty feels like her face is a cake, impossibly frosted, when she looks in the mirror, the effects are subtle and effective. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s still Betty that stares back at her - just Betty with even better eyelashes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know professionals would probably do an even better job,” Toni says, putting the finishing touches on Betty’s cheeks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I doubt that,” Betty says. “Besides I want this wedding to reflect Jug and I as best as possible. Who we actually are, not who we are paying to look like for a day.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think anyone will doubt that. I’m just proud of talking you into getting a photographer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jughead was the reluctant one there. He just doesn’t want any outsiders intervening.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty understands that of course. The desire for privacy, for everyone there to just be good friends and family. But she’s also practical. There’s no way she’d make Toni take photos at her best friend's wedding. The idea of not having photos at all felt equally absurd.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty wanted to look back on the day through the lens of an outsider so that she could see all of their friends in their photos. Toni had helped them pick someone out from some preposterous wedding website or another, and they should be arriving any minute.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<ol>

</ol><p>
  <span>“Stand straighter,” the photographer, Tim barks, and Jughead loathes him in that moment. He doesn’t care about standing straight, he cares about seeing Betty, who should be exiting the bookstore any second. Still he adjusts his posture a little. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door starts to open, and Jughead rushes towards it, even as Tim yells, “Slow down. This is an important moment.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead ignores Tim. It’s been 24 hours since he’s seen Betty, not for any superstitious reasons, but because he’d had a reading he couldn’t reschedule in Philadelphia last night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty’s opening the door slowly, probably because she’s actually listening to Tim’s spouse and co-photographer, Burt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally she steps through it, just as Jughead reaches her. The smile on her face seems otherworldly, he doesn’t even notice the dress, or the hair (he has every confidence that both are nice), before he’s kissing her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a wonderful kiss, all warmth and familiarity, a little bit of tongue, and then he remembers the photographers. He can hear their cameras clicking, and he pulls back, but not too far, so that he can whisper “I love you” in her ear. Then he finally steps back enough to take in the full sight of her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty’s gorgeous, this isn’t news to Jughead, and he’s seen her dressed up before. For his book launch she wore a designer dress that was much fancier than the simple one she’s wearing now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But that dress had seemed almost at odds with who Betty was as a person. It seemed like a costume she’d put on to play semi-famous author's girlfriend. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This dress was slightly more refined than a Betty classic, but it was still in that range, reflecting who she really was as a person, what she loved, rather than what was trendy. He’s really glad that she didn’t give into Veronica’s steady petitioning for a white dress, or even just a more frilly one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her makeup today was also softer, her hair looser, down and slightly curled. She looks like herself, but happier, glowing, really.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love the dress,” he says. He wants to kiss her again, but he doesn’t want it to be caught on camera.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty blushes, and smiles softly, “I’m glad.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They enter the bookstore together, every few seconds the photographers pose them or direct them. Jughead tries to refrain from barking back at Tim (Burt for some reason gets on his nerves less), as he gets them to stand, tilt their heads one way and then another.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally Burt says, “Let’s take a minute. Regroup. Then we’ll take the last few.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty nods politely. Jughead’s pretty sure he’s scowling. He’s so happy to finally be here, on the cusp of marriage with Betty, but he really wants these strangers, and their opinions, to have no part in it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuckers,” Jughead mutters under his breath, feeling more than a little petty.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come here,” Betty says gesturing at the poetry section.  “Let’s sit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once she sits down, Betty takes off her shoes, and only then does Jughead realize that she’s wearing high heels, which isn’t her preference, ever. He has a feeling that this was the one battle where Veronica was victorious. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead takes his off too. He’s wearing polished doc martens that are really too hot for the weather. He removes his socks too, thin and cotton and shoves them in the shoes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He leans back into the shelf and then Betty leans into him, a book already in her hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’cha reading?” he asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sharks in the River. Ada Limón”.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Doesn’t she teach at the same program Kevin does?” Jughead asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Read a poem, please.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Any poem?” Betty asks, both eyebrows raised in challenge. Jughead just nods his agreement. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty leans back into him and starts reading, The Conditional. Jughead finds himself reading along as she speaks, so he is hearing and seeing the words at the same time. It take a while for him to connect with the words but when by the time Betty's a few lines in, he's fully absorbed into the world of the poem.
</span></p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Say the kitchen's a cow's corpse.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Say we never get to see it: bright</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>future, stuck like a bum star, never</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>coming close, never dazzling.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Say we never meet her. Never him.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Say we spend our last moments staring</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>at each other, hands knotted together,</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Say, It doesn't matter. Say, That would be</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>enough. Say you'd still want this: us alive,</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>right here, feeling lucky.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>When Betty reads the last word out loud, he realizes that she’s planted this book here, planned this moment out with the same care and thoughtfulness she puts into the rest of their lives.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s not sure if it’s the words of the poem that calm him, ground him, or the thought she put into sharing it with him, at this moment, when he needed comfort so badly, when so many of his introvert alarms were going off. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am so lucky,” he says, and somewhere he hears a shutter click and then click again. It doesn’t matter. His whole heart is already aglow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead ignores the photographers, thinks of them as male mosquitoes, unable to bite, only to buzz. Instead he takes the book from Betty’s hands, and he reads the next poem, much darker, as she stays there, her head leaning against her shoulder, her presence warm beside him. He is so filled with love.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>8.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Archie is their musical accompaniment throughout. Betty stressed that there should be zero singing, and the store couldn’t fit the band he wanted to bring, so it’s just Archie on one of the beanbags in the children’s section, strumming his guitar under the mobile of a whale. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred doesn’t hold Betty’s arm down the aisle. He had told her in advance that he would not. She understands his reasoning, that the tradition is traced back to when women were property, that he can’t give away what was never his, and what will never be Jughead’s.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, she’s glad to have him by her side. A steady smile on his face, Teresa smiling at both of them from the folding chairs. Although it’s hard to pay attention to the crowd at all, not with Jughead standing at the end of the makeshift aisle. The term “grinning like a fool” has never seemed to suit anyone more. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred presses a kiss onto Betty’s cheek, whispers, “love you,” and then sits down near Teresa.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty faces Jughead at the front of the bookstore. The music stops, and Toni steps between them, her hair the color of the sunrise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>9.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead’s eating his third burger, his arm is looped around Betty’s shoulder. Betty is saying something about Hanif Abdurraqib, to Lucas, who is nodding across the table. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>On Jughead’s lap, Emma, Lucas and Lillah’s one year old is very soundly asleep. A fry clutched in her hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aren’t you going to have toasts?” Lilah asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead likes Lilah, she’s kind and witty, with a strong moral center, but he was also at her wedding with the rice and baby slides and hours of speeches. He knows this is a departure for her. He should probably soothe her adjustment somehow, but instead he says, “Hell no.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Someone, probably Veronica, got Betty a wedding book, but none of it seemed actually helpful. Each time Betty read it, she ended up with tense shoulders. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But because of the unread wedding book and attending Lilah’s wedding, Jughead does know some basics, like they should have had a seating plan and cocktails. But frankly, he can’t bring himself to care.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead Jughead and Betty snagged a booth near the front of the Phonica dinner, which they’ve rented out for the night, and their friends have rotated in and out of filling the other half of the booth. It started with Fred and Teresa for milkshakes, switched to Toni and Archie for onion rings. Kay and Matt were the unlikely pair that joined them for the first burger. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sweet Pea and Fangs, who drove up for the occasion, took second burgers, and now here they are with Emma sprawled across their laps sleeping soundly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you going to smash the cake?” Lilah asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead vaguely remembers this particular tradition from Lilah’s wedding. He couldn’t see the point in wasting perfectly good cake then, and he can’t now, particularly because Betty made his favorite, s’mores cake. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lilah smiles, and says kindly, “You really are a rebel.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Emma rolls over in his lap, revealing a newly made drool patch near his knee.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<ol>

</ol><p>
  <span>Veronica and Archie are dancing to Pursuit of Happiness by Kid Cudi.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead’s leaning against her on one side of the booth, clearly exhausted, and Toni’s head is heavy on Betty’s other shoulder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why are you so tired?” Betty asks. It’s not that she didn’t feel exhausted earlier. But the four cups of coffee she downed during dinner seem to finally be kicking in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I got married today,” Jughead groans. “Weddings are fucking exhausting.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>On the other side of Betty, Toni chuckles, “Tell me about it, I’m never getting married.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty very much doubts that. If things work out with Veronica, Toni will be in for a much more extravagant wedding than they had. There will probably be five piece invitations, and they will probably bother with Save the Dates that aren’t actually emails with the subject line reading “FYI”. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty also knows enough to keep her mouth shut right now, so instead she just sighs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead has less of a sense of self preservation, and so he says, “Veronica will have you dancing to every song at your wedding. You’ll probably have a fucking couples dance.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s pretty clear that weddings bring out the swearing side of Jughead. Betty doesn’t particularly mind. Even with the cups of coffee, it’s been a long day. Good, but long. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Veronica and I aren’t even together,” Toni responds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead’s cough sounds an awful lot like “Right now”. Toni wisely chooses to ignore it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Does it feel different to be married?” Toni asks Betty. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Give it twenty-four hours,” Betty says. By then the jittery feeling from the coffee should have worn off. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It already feels different to me,” Jughead says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty’s a little surprised, she looks over at him. There’s an open expression on his face, a smile on his lips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s too soon,” Betty says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead shrugs, “Not for me. I’ve wanted this for so long. I’ve known you’ve loved me for a long time, don’t get me wrong. But this feels different.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Betty blushes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Toni gets up, pretending to gag a little, and rolling her eyes at them, “Sugar overload, warn a friend first. I’m getting out here before the kissing starts.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In an act of vast maturity Jughead sticks out his tongue, and then moments later he presses his lips against Betty’s.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they pull apart again, Betty says, “I will always love you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jughead whispers back, “I know.”</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The Conditional is a poem written by Ada Limón and you can read it in it's entirety online, although I highly recommend that you buy her book Bright Dead Things (probably my favourite collection of poetry released in the last decade). </p><p>Thank you for reading! Grateful for comments.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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